On June 16, 1960, a film premiered in New York City that would change the face of the horror film -- nay, film in general -- forever. Psycho's effect on filmmaking is incalculable, even if you only track the influences of its most famous sequence, the shower murder. Over the past half-century, various movies and television shows have parodied, pastiched, paid homage, remade and ripped-off Alfred Hitchcock's "clean kill." I've spent the last two months piecing some of these clips together into a meta-homage. May I present to you, the Psycho shower sequence, rebuilt almost entirely from other films.

The
Trollenberg Terror is the title of a 1958 British-produced
feature based on the six part mini series of the same name that aired
in 1956/57 on English television. In what amounts to a pre-emptive
spoiler, the title of the US release was changed to The Crawling
Eye. (More on this unfortunate choice later). While this is not a
perfect film, it possesses virtues that make it eminently watchable
and elevate it above many of the other Mystery Science Theater-bound
genre films of the 1950s.(read more...)

In 1872, a writer named Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu published a tale that
in many ways paved the road for Dracula, Lestat, and hundreds of
other bloodsuckers to come. This was the tale of Carmilla, an undead
seductress who typified the bond between vampirism and sensuality and
whose dark influence on the genre can still be felt to this very day.(read more...)

I'll begin today's discussion with
what I consider a statement of fact: Dracula is boring. That
may be the most unpopular statement I will ever write, but I
wholeheartedly believe it. How lucky are we, then, that twenty-five
years before this abomination was published we were all blessed with
another Irish vampire tale? Yes indeedy, I am talking about Joseph
Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla. This sweetly concise and
beautiful novella (or short story, as some prefer to call it) was
published in 1872 and spawned an entire subgenre of horror: the
lesbian vampire tale.(read more...)

Even
before seeing Robert Downey Jr.'s awesome performance in Guy
Ritchie's film Sherlock
Holmes,
I had been a fan of the genius detective for some time. For some
reason I was always intrigued by Holmes, something about this figure
of reasoning and bravery resonating within me. I still consider him
to be one of my literary heroes, right alongside Batman. The Hound
of the Baskervilles helped bring back some wonderful memories and
reinstate my assertion that Holmes is one of the greatest characters
in the history of literature.(read more...)

Lucio
Fulci is one of the names most synonymous with Italian Horror. Many
regard Fulci, alongside Herschell Gordon Lewis, as one of the genre's
legendary "godfathers of gore"; he was behind the creation of
such grotesque masterpieces as City of the Living Dead and the
infamous Zombi 2. However, there is a different side of Fulci
that many of his gorehound fans are not aware of; he also managed to
establish himself as a master of suspense.(read more...)

The serial killer formula is ripe
horror fare for film studios looking to grab big money from
easy-to-please gorehounds. In fact, the low expectations from slasher
film fans provide a perfect excuse for studios to focus less on
quality and more on marketing. All a director needs is a flashy look,
a decent soundtrack, a lot of blood, and a script that merely serves
to connect the gore set-pieces. The problem with Sleepless is
that it's directed by a master of suspense films, Dario Argento,
and yet still fits the form.(read more...)

For a man who appeared in so few horror pictures, there was always something frightening about Dennis Hopper. As an artist and a man, he seemed to pursue madness. For half his life he lived on a diet of booze and amphetamines, pushing his body to the brink of destruction and inviting stories of a man out of control. There are tales of him pulling knives on co-stars, threats of violence and of him drinking his way into character. Charles Manson saw him as a kindred spirit and begged Hopper to play him onscreen. Look into his eyes on any film following Easy Rider (1968) and they show a man who has stared into the abyss.(read more...)

As this first month of reviews comes to a close, some
readers may find themselves scratching their skulls at this last
selection of the horror genre's type five essentials. Certainly, I
must be mistaken in including a novel that is solidly in the field of
science fiction. "My God man, have you gone mad?!" I hear you
screaming at your computer screen. Actually, I am indeed quite
insane. However, I believe the true lunacy would be to dismiss H. G.
Wells's tale of a terrifying alien invasion as a simple romp into
the world of the scientifically fantastic. Wells imbues his story
with a palpable fear that will have the readers shivering with
genuine fright at the thought of mankind meeting its end at the cold
hands of an alien invader.(read more...)